Abducted Libyan Official Is Released

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

November 18, 2013

CAIRO — The deputy chief of Libya’s intelligence service was temporarily abducted from the parking lot of the airport in Tripoli on Sunday as a standoff between militias and a general strike against militia rule virtually shut down the city.

The official, Mustafa Noah, was released unharmed on Monday, Libyan officials said.

He was abducted just two days after a militia from the coastal city of Misurata opened fire on a nonviolent demonstration against the domination of Tripoli, Libya’s capital, by such armed brigades. The confrontation degenerated into a shootout that killed at least 43 and wounded hundreds, according to Libyan health officials.

Many across Libya called the weekend a watershed for the vexed revolution that ousted Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi two years ago. It brought the first large demonstration by residents of the capital against the freewheeling militias that arrived to help oust Colonel Qaddafi and never left the city, and it posed a major test of the weak transitional government’s ability to control the militias. Around nightfall on Sunday, a local council in Misurata said in a statement that all its fighters had withdrawn from the capital.

Frequent abductions of public officials by militias seeking to extort the transitional government have become a measure of the deepening lawlessness. Last month, a militia kidnapped Prime Minister Ali Zeidan from his residence in a luxury hotel without firing a shot. He was returned unharmed within 24 hours.

Mr. Noah’s family comes from Misurata, the home city of the militia that fired on the demonstrators, adding another possible motive for his abduction.

The deadly clashes on Friday crystallized a rare unity among the capital’s residents, rallying both unarmed civilians and neighborhood militias behind the conviction that the time had come for the militia from Misurata to go.

After a brutal siege of their city by Colonel Qaddafi’s troops, the Misuratans emerged as the rebels’ most potent fighting force. Several brigades, with hundreds of men, set up bases in Tripoli after Colonel Qaddafi was overthrown, and most of the fighters are now on the government payroll.

On Sunday, the elected leaders of the Tripoli City Council called for a general strike, demanding that the militias disarm or leave the city. Thousands of people demonstrated in Algeria Square in the center of the city, and schools, shops, banks and other businesses that normally open on Sundays were closed.

Neighbors barricaded streets, partly to defend their homes against the possibility of new clashes. And on the coastal road at the eastern edge of the city, a neighborhood militia dug in to fight off any reinforcements from Misurata that might try to enter.